In refrigerated bottled drinking water coolers, the known prior art uses a single refrigerated water cooler well which is supplied by water from a water bottle inverted with its neck submerged in the water of the water cooler well. Whenever the level in the well drops below the mouth of the bottle, water is supplied to the well. A supply conduit and spigot is provided to connect water from the lower part of the refrigerated water well and another supply conduit and spigot is provided to supply water in close proximity to the mouth of the bottle. An example of such a water cooler liquid separator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,426 issued Oct. 25, 1988. A baffle plate between the upper portion of the reservoir wherein the bottled water is received and the lower portion of the reservoir is provided to partially prevent turbulent mixing between the upper part and the lower part of the water cooler well.
In the prior art known, the receiving reservoir is part of the cooling well and will be cooled by the water cooler well in a short period of time whenever there is no flow of water.
The prior art water cooler liquid separator does not provide water at room temperature initially from the room temperature spigot. Instead, the flow must draw room temperature water from the bottle before room temperature water is available. The prior art water cooler liquid separator is inefficient in terms of its use of energy and is inconvenient in that one must wait before the flow of uncooled water from the uncooled water spigot begins to flow.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a water separator for separating cooled and uncooled water in a cooler well which is able to provide a continuous supply of both cooled and uncooled water without wasting any water during the initial supply.
It is furthermore an object of the present invention to provide a refrigerated water cooler well water separator which separates a supply of cooled water from room temperature water from a water bottle which is able to provide initially and continuously a supply of either cooled or uncooled water, which is simple to construct and inexpensive.